Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story.
Interpretation
Suffering is an intrinsic part of the Christian narrative, emphasizing its significance in understanding faith.
Timothy Keller's quote highlights that suffering is a central theme in Christianity, suggesting that it is through suffering that deeper truths and meanings about faith, redemption, and the human experience are revealed. The message indicates that rather than being something to avoid, suffering is essential to the complete understanding of life and spiritual growth within Christian belief.
In practice
In a sermon about faith and resilience, this quote can be used to illustrate how challenges lead to spiritual growth.
Falling in love in a Christian way is to say,'I am excited about your future and I want to be part of getting you there. I'm signing up for the journey with you. Would you sign up for the journey to my true self with me? It's going to be hard but I want to get there.
Only in Jesus Christ do we see how the untamable, infinite God can become a baby and a loving Savior. On the cross we see how both the love and the holiness of God can be fulfilled at once.
All human problems are ultimately symptoms, and our separation from God is the cause.
While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
God's Kingdom is "present in its beginnings, but still future in its fullness. This guards us from an under-realized eschatology (expecting no change now) and an over-realized eschatology (expecting all change now). In this stage, we embrace the reality that while we're not yet what we will be, we're also no longer what we used to be.
Spirituality for me is recognizing that I am connected to the energy of all creation, that I am a part of it and it is always a part of me.
By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
Do not follow after the past; do not go forward to meet the future. Instead, just rest the mind naturally in the present awareness.
Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.
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